4.20.2012

You Serve Your Mother That Cocktail?

Sometimes, you want to do something elaborate and show-stopping with your cocktails. Sometimes you want to flame an orange peel, measure three different kinds of bitters with an eye dropper and squeeze kumquats one-by-one over hand-chipped ice.

And sometimes, you just want to pour something strong out of a big, manly bottle and drink it. Fast. Which is why we're presenting you today with the Mother In Law cocktail.

This cocktail is spirit-forward, robust* and earthier than what you're used to drinking. It's like pouring a leather couch and a smoking jacket into a glass rinsed with a hard day's work.

Listen, before I sound like too much of a Portlandia episode, let's just say that having a burly, batched cocktail like this one around will make you happy. It will make you feel happy when you are too lazy to measure things. It will make you happy when you realize you can either stir this and strain it into a chilled glass, or pour it over a big old rock. It will make you happy when, say, maybe your mother in law is around and she has a lot of things to say to you. I am privileged enough to have mothers-in-law who do not drive me to drink too much.** You might not be, in which case you can come over and I will pour you one of these.

Mother In Law Cocktailadapted from Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Haigh (AKA Dr. Cocktail)This takes a bit of planning in the procuring of ingredients, but once it's
mixed, you have a well-balanced, complex cocktail batched and ready for
you to cry on its shoulder.